OK, but still well short of a 6ft fence post.
Another pointless observation/anecdote:
In my last house, I had a bird feeder attached to a batten suspended from the top of one of my fence posts; I observed one of my neighbour’s cats to leap from a crouched position in the herbaceous border below and take one of the young blue tits from the feeder.
I know this is just me saying it, not some physicist, but do you think I’m just making this up or I am mistaken, or what?
I encourage that. I am as ignorant as the next man. But my ignorance will not be dispelled through the use of arguments from ignorance.
I want to see some facts, because so far all the reputable evidence supports my ignorant position. If I am ignorant the so are a lot of college professors in physics and animal physiology. And that seems to include the erudite Professor Schmidt-Nielsen, the world’s foremost authority on comparative animal physiology. I expect that no one needs me to explain why I will trust this man over anecdote.
http://www.anaesthetist.com/physiol/basics/scaling/Kleiber.htm
physical constraints are things that limit how much an organism can be modified to cope with changes in scaling. For example, as Schmidt-Nielsen has pointed out so well, you and a flea can perform a standing jump to more or less the same height (The flea can jump 20cm high, you can raise you centre of gravity about 40cm jumping from standing. The only reason why you win is because the flea suffers so much air resistance). But because muscles can only contract so fast (a physical constraint associated with the way muscle works) the flea jumps not by simply contracting its muscles, but by compressing a chunk of highly elastic resilin, and then explosively releasing this. At such a small scale, the muscles simply wouldn’t contract fast enough to propel the flea upwards - so the flea has found a trick that overcomes the physical constraint.
Ok, this cite is on a university webpage, and my cite is even cited, but I guess it doesn’t count because I googled it?
You’ve given me zero. None of your cites even mention pumas.
I couldn’t say. What do you think? Do you think it more likely that all the world’s animal physiologists are wrong, or that you are wrong?
I am an arrogant SOB, but if I found that all the world’s foremost scientists in a field told me that what I think I saw was impossible I would begin by doubting myself.
Remember to take into account what I said about animals pivoting in flight as human high-jumpers do. Can you be sure the cat wasn’t doing the feline equivalent to a frosby flop?
You were obviously mistaken Mangetout, because otherwise, it would contradict the erudite Professor Schmidt-Nielsen. 
No it doesn’t count because it only mentions an ability to “jump up to 18 to 20 feet from the ground to a tree limb”. It doesn’t mention whether the jump was from a standing start or if it involved scrabbling. No dice sorry.
No, that’s right. How silly of me, they only mention all animals, and of course we know that pumas aren’t animals. :rolleyes:
Cecil says that scientists never ‘discovered that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly’. It was a mistake made by one scientist whilst drunk in a non-professional context. Unless you are suggesting that all those professors that have been cited so far were drunk and in a non-professional context I can’t see what your point is.
What kind of pivot could a cat do to add 2’ to that 3.5’ jump? I’m just curious, since just about every person that’s had a housecat that’s allowed to jump on top of things will eventually see a cat jump onto the top of a fridge.
Unfortunatly, mathmatics mean jack squat to me. I was never good at math, other than addition/subtraction. Hehe.
BTW I understand, Blake, that you’ve currently got a Pit thread going with someone who sees dead people.
This thread is altogether different.
You’ve got a bunch of regular people who see cats jump over fences every day.
There’s a difference between asking for proof of ghosts, and asking for proof that cats can jump fences.
[hijack]
While looking on Yahoo for any mention of cat jump heights, I did find a page about winged cats.
http://www.messybeast.com/winged-cats.htm
Hmm.
[/hijack]
**If I’d only seen it once, out of the corner of my eye, I’d be happy to admit I was just plain wrong, but like I’ve said, cats and six-foot fences are ubiquitous 'round these parts; I’ve seen it many times; the cat crouches about eight inches away from the fence, does that odd ass-wiggle thing, then springs almost vertically onto the fence post. There’s a possibility that the leap only takes the cat sufficiently high in free space that it can hook a claw or two into the top of the post and give itself a boost, but that doesn’t appear to be by any means universally the case and it would still represent a leap of over five feet.
I think it most likely that these calculations are talking about theoretical ideals that don’t always play out exactly that way in the real world, due to any number of variables and exploits.
**Like I said, I might back down if I’d only thought I’d glimpsed it once, but I’ve see it a lot.
I can’t see how this could be the case, given than a) we’re talking about a standing start; the Fosbury flop usually involves a run-up(doesn’t it?) and b)we’re talking about a domestic cat and a six-foot fence - there’s no way the cat could place its centre of gravity even halfway up the height of the fence without leaving the ground.
It could be similar to the one that a human does to add 3.5’ to a 3.5’ jump I assume. I don’t know how the Frosby flop works, but humans seem to be able to 7 feet using that technique. There is even less doubt that humans can’t exceed 1 metre than there is that cats can’t exceed a metre. Yet we still clear 2 metre hurdles. Well, not me personally but some humans. Jump, pivot centre of gravity.
Jesus Christ. It says JUMP. It doesn’t say “scramble”, “climb”, “pole vault” or anything else besides “JUMP”.
I give up, Blake. You are grasping at theory when the real world proves otherwise. It just comes across as obstinate.
No one disputes that cat jump fences. The question is how.
There is no difference in your argument from ignorance and their argument form ignorance. None at all. In both cases you have only anecdotal evidence but believe that because I can’t disprove your position that somehow validates it. That is not correct. It is an argument form ignorance and has no place on these boards IMO.
You could well be right. But to this point all reliable the evidence says that cats can’t jump 6 feet. I hope you will understand if I trust the scientists and remain sceptical of your anecdotes. I too have seen cats jump 6 foot fences, but I couldn’t say exactly how they did it. They may have used their claws to run up the fence.
I believe it can be used just as effectively from a standing start. I know this from watching a movie about a college track star and it had a training montage where he learned high jump by practicing by standing against the bar, so take it with a grain of salt.
The Fosbury flop is a technique whereby the athlete jumps over the bar, arching his/her back in such a way that the centre of gravity (which actually occupies a point in midair somewhere between the athlete’s head feet), passes below the bar, while the athlete’s body passes over it.
That’s’ correct. Jump.
a. To spring off the ground or other base by a muscular effort of the legs and feet.
b. To move suddenly and in one motion
Either of those definitions allows the animal to scramble. What definition are you using? More importantly what definition were the authors using?
I’m not talking a pole vault. (I have no idea what this Frosby flip is). I’ve never seen, or heard of, a person standing still and then jumping 7’ straight up.
Hurdles are different from the top of a fridge. You watch e person jump over a hurdle, they get a running start, lead with one leg, pivot, have the other leg follow.
You watch a cat jump onto a fridge, and it’s stand, wiggle, jump and land on all 4 paws. Usually with sliding, so I don’t think claws would come into play much, heh.
Did you put up a cite of whatever pivot would allow a cat from a stand still to land 5-6’ from the floor? I may have missed it?
So using a similar technique the cat’s claws could have passed over the bird at 6 feet while the cat’s centre of gravity remained well below 6 feet?
You are a fool. You simply do not have any reliable evidence the cats can’t jump six feet. You don’t actually have any evidence at all.
You have a general theory, which you believe in, which conflicts with empirical evidence.
At which point, any sensible person, and certainly any good scientist, would reject the theory.
Well, crap. Y’all post a lot faster than I do, heh.
Great. Now we get to debate the definition of jump.
If a puma jumps up to 18 foot tree limb catches it with it’s front claws and scrambles up the rest of the way, that’s still alot more than 3 feet. Unless the puma is 15 feet tall.